Dear people, we have had some problems with the event calendar on Joes website and couldn’t fill in the events for July and August. The calendar is working again and we are adding everything in the next couple of days. In the time being, we publish herewith just the very rough schedule for July and August. Everything will be as always except that there is no Voku on Thursdays in the summer. Instead some renovations will be done during the free days and you are welcome to participate in Joes . We will keep you updated with concrete tasks that have to/will be done in the following two months.

Joes Summer schedule for July and August (detailed informations about movies and benefits will be added soon. Also check radar.squat.net for Joes events and everything else that goes on in the city): […Lees verder]

Eight weeks to go for the Valreep. Mayor van der Laan was getting too impatient to evict the Valreep, social centre squatted since 24 july 2011. At the end of April, after yet another proposal by the squatters to legalise the building, the eviction letter was delivered not by some random cop but by Leen Schaap himself, the nostalgic police chief, commanding police forces during every eviction in Amsterdam. Schaap did not hesitate to climb the fences to make his way to the Valreep. “How do you feel about this?” dares he to ask while handing the letter. Idealen ontruim niet! (You can’t evict ideals!) announces the Valreep website. […Lees verder]

Despite the continuous efforts by the government to keep squatted spaces under the threat of repression and eviction, new autonomous and creative projects keep on emerging in Amsterdam. On March the 1st, the buildings on the Vechtstraat 1, 5, 7 were squatted.

A new social centre, De Strijd, on Vechtstraat 7, opened just two weeks after the occupation. The ongoing workshops (language classes, martial arts), vegan kitchen, and give away shop immediately transformed these buildings from objects of real estate speculation into spaces for the experimentation of radical politics. The support of the neighbours and the large participation of many groups of activists show the vital importance of creating autonomous and collective sites of struggle to contrast the political desertification of the city. […Lees verder]

During the last months various squats were opened and closed in Amsterdam and surroundings. Yet, the eviction procedure is becoming easier for the cops. Recently, the police came out with an old trick, the speed- eviction: despite squatting being illegal, squatters still have the right to domestic peace, to get notified 8 weeks in advance, and to be able to start a court case to defend themselves. However, in the last weeks two office buildings in the Amsterdam’s surroundings were evicted by regular cops without any notice, just a few days after the occupation. The squatters were arrested and quickly released without charges.
Evictions without notice and without a court ruling are illegal, as they violate the right to domestic privacy of the inhabitants. The cops know this well, but too often they put themselves ‘above the law’ to serve the interests of private property owners.
To stop the trend of illegal speed-evictions, the Amsterdam squatting groups are about to sue the state, and made a call out to other groups of squatters for collecting cases of speed-eviction. […Lees verder]

Here a list of events that took place at Joe’s Garage in 2013. There were various special events, workshops, bands performing, benefits, movie nights, info nights, next to the weekly events, which are the Kraakspreekuur, the Lonely Collective Day Cafe, the give away shop, the sunday movie night and the Vegazulu people’s kitchen. Monthly posters and flyers were printed and distributed around the city. Regular news about the local squat scene and other campaigns were published on-line in the month editorial. All this would have not been possible without the participation of the many volunteers. […Lees verder]

Sunday November 3rd 2013, Movie night, A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, 2006, 100′). Door opens at 20:00, film begins at 21:00. The war on drugs has been lost, and when a reluctant undercover cop is ordered to spy on those he is closest to, the toll that the mission takes on his sanity is too great to comprehend in director Richard Linklater’s rotoscoped take on Philip K. Dick’s classic novel. [read more]

As a squatted social center, how do we communicate to the outside world? Where do you find us on-line and where do you NOT find us? We are not here to provide passive intelligence to state intelligence agencies, or to make their task easier. Making ourselves visible on a website hosted by a radical and political server is a first necessary step. Being able to reach other activists and squatters, not only the ones based in the Netherlands, is something we would not want to miss. In the will to be an open space for political initiatives, we want to reach further than the neighbourhood, further than a city and its squatting scene.

Being a squat and having a squat scene active and visible on decent platforms may have some importance in these times of repression. Reading about houses being squatted and evicted is one thing, being able to find each other, not only on-line, knowing which are our public events has its importance to strengthen us all. […Lees verder]

Time for some news, summer has been quite busy at Joe’s Garage and around. The one year squatted office building on the Arent Krijtsstraat 1 in Diemen is gone, back to the owner, with a fence around it but not much of a future. On June 30th, after seven years of emptiness, the Cruquiusweg 117 was squatted, making place for a new project, De Binderij, bringing some new life to this spooky Cruquiusgebied. Numerous anti-squatted buildings are rotting away in this desolate neighbourhood, symbolising more than ever the failure of local politicians in developing a neighbourhood or just keeping life going on. On July 2nd, the City of Amsterdam launched its second eviction wave of the year, unleashing its dogs to evict nine squats. Swammerdamstraat 12 was evicted for the fourth time. The greedy owner did not wait long to demolish it, infuriating still more neighbours. Thanks to the mayor, an extra sand yard has appeared! Squats on the Czaar Peterstraat, the Simon Stevinstraat 25 (Willem Beukels Alternatief), the Cornelis Drebbelstraat 35 (LaRage) and the Bessemerstraat 23 (El Taller social center) were also evicted. […Lees verder]

Is Joe’s Garage today open? Check our full program on Radar:

We need you in the kitchen!

Please keep in mind Joe's is run by volunteers, mail us if you want to cook. We need people on January 3, 7, 10, 14, 17, 24 and 28. Without you signing up, without a collective effort, without you in the kitchen, we are remaining closed.